Weaving

Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstance: A Thousand Years of Brocaded Tabletwoven Bands

I bought this book for the amazing pictures and diagrams. There are patterns galore for reproducing these historic weavings, but I know I will never do it. It's a lot of work. I watched the author weave some while this book was still in production, and my copy came from the stacks in her garage. (Self-publishing is not for the weak.) The time involved to do pick-up brocade is considerable, and that's just one pattern. Here there are pages and pages. Maybe one day I'll adapt some of the designs to other techniques.

Handweavers Pattern Book

A classic that can be hard to find. It's worth hunting for if you have a four harness loom, as there is page after page of traditional patterns. A lot of the book is for supplementary weft structures like overshot and summer and winter, which are not for the novice but can be adapted into all sorts of interesting fabrics. I've been going through it looking for things I might want to combine or adapt for more harnesses. Many teachers and authors use designs from this book and some older publications assume you have at least read it, if not have your own well-used copy.

Learning to Weave

I bought the first edition of this book long ago and recently borrowed the second from my guild library for a refresher. In addition to a lot of good help about getting started with weaving, there are tables and charts for yarn sizes and reed substitutions that I use for almost every floor loom project. I have to go back and look at the diagram for hemstitching every time. I've been reading about warping methods as a reminder and to think about if I want to try warping back to front over my usual front to back. The new edition covers both.

I never worked through all the exercises in the book because I got it after I had already been weaving a little. But I used it all the time when I was thinking up new things to do with the four harness loom because she explains how to make new patterns and get the threading and treadling for what you want. There is also a good description of designing with blocks that I've gone back to now that I have way more harnesses to work with.

Mastering Weave Structures: Transforming Ideas into Great Cloth

I got this recently, as a surprise gift to celebrate my new loom. It seems that The Boyfriend was wandering through Amazon.com and in the list of paleo and computer books, this popped up. He sometimes gets me textile books, so they show up in his suggested offerings.

What he didn't know is that Sharon Alderman is one of my favorite weaving authors, for her interest in exploring structure in-depth so you can not only make whatever it was she was talking about but understand it enough to adapt it to your own ideas. This is exactly what I need to go from four to twelve, although I can see it could be incredibly frustrating for someone who only had a four harness loom.

I'm still sorting out what I can do and what I want to try, as I still have tons of ideas for stuff I was going to do on the smaller loom. There's a lot of sixteen and more in there that I still can't weave, but they are helpful as examples of what can be done with a particular structure. If I ever get that second warp beam installed, I expect I'll be using the directions on turning drafts to weave more complex designs with one shutttle.

A Weaver's Book of 8-Shaft Patterns: From the Friends of Handwoven

This is for 8 harness looms what Davison is for 4, but even better because it has all kinds of photographs. I think it was recently reprinted. If you have an 8 harness loom and you like messing with patterns, buy this book. Really. It will keep you busy for years.